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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865275">That Was the Year</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltrolven/pseuds/smalltrolven'>smalltrolven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angsty Schmoop, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Mutual Pining, None except s15 spoilers, Season/Series 15, Soulmates</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:13:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,655</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltrolven/pseuds/smalltrolven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds Sam’s first digital camera hidden in the Impala’s trunk while he’s working on switching out the mouldering carpet. He’s surprised at the effects the pictures and videos that Sam took twelve years ago cause between them. A lot more than he ever would have guessed, but it had been one hell of a weird year, that one right before he went to Hell.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sam/Dean</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>133</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester Big Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Not my characters, only my words. Written for the 2019/2020 <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="https://deanwbigbang.livejournal.com/profile"></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="https://deanwbigbang.livejournal.com/">deanwbigbang</a>. Thank you, <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="https://jdl71.livejournal.com/profile"></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="https://jdl71.livejournal.com/">jdl71</a> for the very helpful beta work. Many thanks to <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="https://sillie82.livejournal.com/profile"></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="https://sillie82.livejournal.com/">sillie82</a> for the great art that accompanies this fic. Set in a s15 AU where Jack is back from the Empty.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p></p><div>
  <p>Be sure and check out the <a href="https://sillie82.livejournal.com/456357.html">art masterpost right here.</a></p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s something he’s been putting off for months, replacing the carpeting in Baby’s trunk. He’d fixed the leak pretty quickly in the spring, but she’d taken on a lot of water before she was sealed up right. Turns out keeping a pissed-off werewolf, even if he is a friend, in your trunk can cause leaks. Unfortunately the funky smell hadn’t ever really gone away. Sam had complained about their duffels smelling musty the last time they’d had to drive cross country. He’s got the next couple of weeks off, they’d both agreed to take a breather in their packed hunting schedule. Luckily he’d ordered the replacement carpet and backer boards months ago when he’d thought he’d have some time. That was before Mom had…enough thinking about that, back to work.</p><p>It’s a little strange ripping and tearing the old carpet out, it separates from the glue pretty easily in most spots. But it feels awful to be so destructive to his baby even if it’s necessary. There’s a big pile of what he’s torn out in the trash can within a half hour or so. The most time-consuming part of this step is going to be the places where it’s being stubborn and staying glued on. Seems to be mostly the corners and dips in the body panels. He’d forgotten how many small crevices were in there. Back when he’d made the hidden weapons compartment a little more organized, he hadn’t utilized most of this space because it wouldn’t have been one flat surface. He remembered that he hadn’t wanted to risk losing some important tool that they’d need in a hurry on a hunt. It would be pretty dumb to bite it just because he couldn’t find the essential gizmo before the beastie of the week got him.</p><p>He brings one of the stand lights over next to Baby and turns it on to illuminate the depths of her now mostly exposed trunk. The shadows and shapes are almost eerie, it seems like it could go on forever in some places, like an endless tunnel. But it’s just how the light is hitting it he tells himself, shoving a hand into the strangest looking spot, trying to grip an edge of carpet to pull. He grips it tightly between his fingertips and tugs, setting his feet, pushing his ass out for counterbalance, he yanks—hard. He almost falls back on his ass, a big piece of carpet in one hand that stays attached the only thing that keeps him from hitting the floor. This old-school glue is really something. He looks back into the space he’d been trying to clear and it looks different now, a little shiny, but not quite car-paint shiny. He adjusts the stand light to hit the spot a little more directly and is surprised to see what he’s uncovered.</p><p>It’s a camera. One of those old-school kind of chunky models from when they’d first come out in the mid-2000’s. As Dean holds it in his hands, turning the camera over and over, he remembers it all in a rush. It’s the one he’d bought at the Walmart they’d stopped in on their way out of Cicero, Indiana. He’d grabbed it to give something to Sam for his birthday. And to kind of make up for the whole weird thing with Lisa and Ben. After all, Sam was the one who had really saved Ben, he was the one who’d figured out the whole changeling thing and torched the mama changeling.</p><p>Dean remembers that Lisa and Ben had only thanked him, not his brother. Sam had backed off and stayed by the car to give him privacy or whatever. Because it had been weird, him having an almost could-have-been family that didn’t include Sam. Basically, it just wasn’t fair that Sam didn’t get thanked the way he should have. Back then he’d wanted to make up for it, and grabbed the nicest looking camera in that Walmart when they’d been resupplying on their way to the next hunt.</p><p>The camera—it suddenly feels so heavy with all the damn memories that are attached, Dean sinks down to sit on the Impala’s back bumper holding the thing, wanting to throw it away from him like a hot potato. He hasn’t let himself think about Ben or Lisa in a long time.</p><p>Way back then, he had still been carrying around that foolish hope that Ben might have been his—actually his kid. And he remembers how relieved he’d been when Sam had saved Ben, especially Ben from the changelings. They’d never talked about it (of course) but Sam coming through for that particular kid had really been a special thing for Dean. Probably because he’d appreciated that Sam had seen how important Ben was to Dean without him even saying anything. It had really been…thrilling, no that’s not quite right, more like inevitable that Sam would do that. Like it was assumed, it was something either of them would do for family. And if it had all worked out like he’d foolishly hoped, his brother would have really been Uncle Sam to Ben.</p><p>Uncle Sam, hah! Now that would have been something to get to tease him endlessly about.</p><p>He looks down to the camera, sees how tight his grip is, the whiteness of his knuckles and fingertips showing that these memories are tough to bear, almost too much. No wonder he doesn’t let himself go there too often. Remembering all this might-have-been domestic bliss is all crap anyway. Sure, he’d have made himself stay with Lisa if Sam hadn’t come back from Hell. He’d probably own the construction company he’d been working for by now, had himself even more drinking and/or backyard barbecue buddies. It would have been fine. He would have eventually pulled himself out of the pit of despair. Would have let himself concentrate on making a good life for Ben and Lisa at the very least. Who knows, he might have even let himself be happy now and then.</p><p>Who is he kidding? That domestic bliss shit is only a crappy wish for the sheep who don’t know what really happens in the dark. There’s not enough whisky in the world to turn him into that.</p><p>He tosses the camera back into the trunk, he can’t hold it a second longer, it really is feeling too heavy with all the memories attached to it. He stands up and gently puts the trunk lid down, pressing it until the latch catches. Dean pats the trunk twice, like he’s saying goodnight to an old and beloved family dog.</p><p>“I’ll be back to finish this up tomorrow, Baby,” Dean says, feeling silly for speaking out loud to his car. But Sam’s not around, and even if he was here to start teasing, Dean wouldn’t care too much. His whole life he’s talked to her like another member of the family. Because she is one, and Sam knows it.</p><p>He ambles out of the garage and heads to the bathroom to get cleaned up before it’s time to make dinner. Sam’s going to be back some time before then. He searches out the newest hiding spot Sam’s tried out for his special shampoo. This time it’s behind the stack of folded towels in the cupboard. He knows that Sam knows that he uses the stuff, the scent is hard to miss. It became a regular thing, after that first time he’d used it because his own bottle of shampoo had been empty, and Sam’s had been sitting there—well, there had been something about that smell. It’s comforting or something, like it’s become *their* smell. Which is all kinds of weird, he knows, <em>he knows</em>. But playing this hiding and finding the fancy shampoo game is a low-level way to satisfy the ongoing prank war thing they’ve had going between them all these years. They could call it: Eau de Winchester—he ought to make a label on the computer and slap it on the bottle, Sam would probably get a kick out of that.</p><p>He probably would not get a kick out of how much shampoo Dean uses…or exactly where he actually uses it. It’s not too often he has the bunker to himself, and he’s in the mood after thinking about Lisa, how bendy she’d been even a few years after the first time they’d spent that long weekend together. He rubs the shampoo into his hair and sighs when the scent envelops him, and he flashes on his brother’s hair, warmed up in the sun at that one rest stop in Colorado. How the breeze had blown the smell to him across the picnic table. Sam had looked radiant, smiling at his jokes, clinking their beer bottles together, those dimples…oh god, why is he using his Sam shampoo-covered hand to stroke himself? He tries to switch back to thinking of Lisa instead, how she’d been so eager to please, especially after Sam had come back, like she knew she had to work harder to keep Dean in her bed.</p><p>Sam—god how gutted he’d been, waking up from the djinn juice, seeing him alive after all that time, his hair so long and perfect, thinking he must be in Heaven. He strokes harder, faster at the thought of that reunion, how Sam had hugged him so close, how they’d pressed their bodies together head to toe. And Sam had smelled so fucking good, he’d smelled just like this. That must have been when he started using this fancy-ass shampoo, only the best for Soulless. Goddamn how ripped he’d been, an absolute perfect specimen, Dean hadn’t been able to avoid staring when he’d walk around naked after showers in their motel rooms.</p><p>Dean had hoped that Soulless would push the issue, try and step over the line they’d always tugged on between them—never stepping over it, but always wanting to, both of them, never going too far. Not like this now, imagining his ripped brother, with him here in the shower, using his big hand on Dean, how he’d hold him with his other hand, probably have it on his ass, maybe pressing in a few fingers, those long fingers reaching inside him. Dean couldn’t help thrusting between Sam’s hand on his cock, and Sam’s fingers pressing his ass open. The things Sam would say about what he wanted to do to Dean next. That was that, he was coming hard, shouting out Sam’s name, all over the tile in the showers, the evidence of his disgusting weakness washed away almost immediately.</p><p>Thankfully he was toweling off when Sam called down the hallway.</p><p>“Hi honey, I’m home!”</p><p>This was their new joke, making fun of their pretend domestic almost-bliss. But hearing Sam’s voice, the one that had the smile in it that Dean loved so much almost made him cry in that moment. It had been too close like this for too long. He wasn’t sure how much more of this stupid pining and self-denial he could really take. He knew it affected how he treated Sam, sometimes he’d take it out on him, treat him more harshly than he wanted or even worse, just shut him out completely. At least he wasn’t shoving women in his face all the time like he used to, that was his usual go-to coverup maneuver, especially back in the days when Sam was using that camera. That desperate year, a whole year’s worth of the most intense longing to just crash through the line that separated them, but holding back because he didn’t want to lose Sam at the moment he needed him most. Maybe he should have, then Sam could have just left, had his own life, not dealt with all the crap that came next. Who knows, the angels might have just left Dean down in Hell to rot like he was supposed to be doing. Like he probably deserved for thinking about his brother this way.</p><p>“You look tired, Dean, you want me to make dinner tonight?” Sam asks, leaning just his head into the bathroom like he didn’t want to intrude.</p><p>Dean glances at himself briefly in the mirror over the sink that he’d apparently been staring into when Sam had come in. What was he even doing home this soon? “Yeah, that’d be great, Sam, thanks. I’m gonna go lie down until then,” Dean says, resolutely not making eye contact, because he knows he can’t hide all this, it’s too close to the surface.</p><p>Sam steps into the bathroom and comes closer, landing a giant hand on Dean’s shoulder, the weight of his brother’s concern feeling even heavier. “Dean, what’s going on, you okay?” Sam asks, concern and worry coloring all the spaces in-between the words.</p><p>“‘m good, Sam, just didn’t get much sleep last night,” Dean mumbles, still not meeting Sam’s eyes. He focuses on what he sees in the mirror, Sam’s hand on his bare shoulder, cupping the whole damn thing in his enormous palm, he can feel the warmth of Sam soaking into him. If he only knew what you were just doing in the shower, he wouldn’t be touching you, he’d be running away down the hall screaming.</p><p>“Sometimes I miss staying in motel rooms, because I’d already know that,” Sam says.</p><p>Dean’s eyes flick up and finally meet Sam’s in the mirror. All he sees is concern, and Sam’s super-power: true empathy. It’s always Sam’s job to be filling in the blanks of what Dean isn’t saying. This time he’s probably assuming Dean was having nightmares or stressing about Mom. But hold on…he misses staying in motel rooms? Just because Sam would know what was going on with him better?</p><p>“You do?” Dean asks.</p><p>“Yeah, we kept better track of each other when we were living like that,” Sam says, his hand briefly squeezing Dean’s shoulder before he lifts it off.</p><p><br/>Dean wants to tell him to put it back this second, that he wants it—needs it. And it must show on his face, because Sam’s hand is back on his shoulder, warm and welcome, and he’s using it to turn Dean towards him. Dean looks up and searches Sam’s face, trying to figure this out, what has Sam seen, what is he thinking?</p><p>“You know you can talk to me, right? I’m right here,” Sam says, slow and careful, almost like he’s walking through a minefield.</p><p>“It’s the same shit, different day, nothin’ new or exciting. And yeah, I know I can talk to you, thanks for the reminder, Sammy,” Dean says, putting the relief and gratitude into the way he says Sam’s nickname. The one that they both know means so much more than a plain old nickname.</p><p>Sam smiles, the dimples even make a blessedly rare appearance, Dean doesn’t get to see those much these days.</p><p>“I’ve really missed those,” Dean blurts out, instantly sorry he said that out loud because of all the questions it’ll raise that he doesn’t want to lie about when he answers.</p><p>“Missed what?” Sam asks, almost tilting his head in that puppy-like way he’s always had, still smiling, still flashing the fucking dimples. They go away slowly as Dean hesitates to actually answer with the truth.</p><p>“These,” Dean says, poking two fingers into either side of Sam’s face, landing right in the spots where the dimples appear. He’s betting by doing this that it’ll break the tension, of what might happen next. But then Sam smiles and Dean’s fingers are being moved, almost sucked into where the muscles that make the dimples appear. And Sam’s so damn warm under his fingertips and his beautiful, smiling mouth is right there.</p><p>Sam giggles and his eyes flash briefly with something much darker than Dean is used to seeing. He turns his head and grabs one of Dean’s fingertips with his front teeth. His lips close around Dean’s finger and there’s the briefest moment of Sam’s tongue and slight suction that makes the floor disappear under Dean’s feet. He’s falling into finally having this feeling and he just doesn’t care. Sam growls and lets Dean’s finger go and takes a step backwards that might as well be a mile.</p><p>“Dinner then?” Dean asks, embarrassed to sound so damn breathless, but he’s standing there, only a towel around his waist, relieved that he hadn’t done something worse, and that at least the half-chub he’s got going now won’t be too obvious or get much worse thanks to his previous activities in the shower.</p><p>“Yeah…uh, I’m on it,” Sam says, stepping out of the bathroom, a little unnecessary wiggle in his walk just to put a point on whatever the hell that just was.</p><p>Good lord, what is he supposed to do with all this now?</p><p>***</p><p>While they’re eating dinner in the kitchen, Sam’s phone rings with a message from Jack.</p><p>“So,…uh, Cas is dropping Jack off in Manhattan tomorrow. I’m going to go meet them,” Sam says after he reads the message on his phone.</p><p>“Good thing it’s just Manhattan, Kansas and not Manhattan, New York. Who knows what the kid would get into there on his own,” Dean says.</p><p>“True, at some point we’ve got to try a hunt in a big city with him, just to show him how to get around,” Sam says.</p><p>“Who knows, maybe he’d blend in better in a city, unlike he does here in Lebanon,” Dean observes, thinking of that little gang of high schoolers Jack had gotten involved with.</p><p>Dean knows it’s well past time for Sam to teach Jack about using university libraries for research. Kansas State over in Manhattan is the closest school to them that’s got anything worthwhile on site, and their computer access to the rest of the digital resources out there is top notch.</p><p>“My plan is to teach him how to use university libraries to research stuff for cases, how to fit in on campus, how to gain access to restricted special section collections. Those libraries have saved our asses a few times so it’s worth making sure he knows how to do it on his own.”</p><p>“That’s where they keep all the good books and scrolls and shit,” Dean says.</p><p>“Yep, climate control is where it’s at for that kind of stuff. I wish it wasn’t so inconvenient and that all the libraries would just digitize everything, but that’s still a long ways off,” Sam says.</p><p>“You wearing your sweater vest?” Dean asks.</p><p>“Probably, why?” Sam asks.</p><p>“No reason,” Dean mutters, not wanting to admit a thing, and kicking himself for bringing it up in the first place. What the hell is with him tonight, anyway?</p><p>Sam’s eyebrows quirk for a moment, like he’s going to push the question. “I’ll be leaving early in the morning, probably before you get up,” Sam says.</p><p>“Okay, uh, how long are you planning on being there?” Dean asks.</p><p>“Two days max,” Sam says. “You can come with me if you want, Jack would probably love it if you were there too.”</p><p>Dean smiles at the idea, it’s sweet to think of that, and probably true. “Naw, you guys need the time together to concentrate on the whole collegiate gig. I don’t have much to offer as far as that goes.”</p><p>Sam tips his head to the side, scrunches his eyebrows together in obvious disagreement, then he rights himself and schools his face into the normal range. “I don’t agree with that—at all. You always have something worthwhile to teach him, Dean.”</p><p>God, he never stops with this shit. Dean frowns, not accepting the praise. “Not about college stuff, that’s your thing, it was never mine.”</p><p>“Fine, I guess we’re pretending all those times you’ve charmed your way into college libraries across the country never happened. Whatever, dude,” Sam says with a scoff with the edges sanded off by another smile.</p><p>Sam knows, of course he knows why Dean doesn’t want to come along. Any reminder of the Stanford era brings it all up again. How happy Sam had been there, what he’d lost, how he’d wanted to go back and finish all those years later and never got the chance to do, all wrapped up with the feelings of abandonment that Dean would never get over.</p><p>“You could still go back and finish, you know that, right?” Dean asks in a rush.</p><p>“It’s not what I want anymore, Dean. I’m happy with what I’ve got here. But thanks, that means a lot, you saying that,” Sam says.</p><p>Dean’s stunned, he can’t put enough words together to respond coherently. Sam smiles again, the dimples coming out in full force.</p><p>“You don’t believe me?” Sam asks, momentary worry flashing across his face.</p><p>Seeing that flash of worry on his brother’s face pushes him to answer honestly. “Sure I do, Sammy. It’s just…I don’t know, I feel like a failure sometimes, that I had to pull you away from all that because I couldn’t deal with Dad being missing by myself. You loved college so much, it was so good for you. And I wish you could have it again.”</p><p>“Dean…listen, I never blamed you for that, okay? It’s not on you, it never was. Besides, if I’d ever really wanted to, I would have gone back to school somehow. But like I said, I’m happy with what I’ve got here.” Sam stands up from the table and takes his plate to the sink. “And with that, I’m going to head to bed, see you in a couple days.”</p><p>Sam gets up and leaves then, a satisfied, happy look on his face. Like he knows he’s finally gotten the point across after all these years. Dean has to get used to the idea that Sam is actually happy with where he is now. Dean watches him lope up the steps and out of the kitchen. He calls after him, “Bye, say hi to Jack for me.”</p><p>***</p><p>The next morning, by the time Dean gets up, Sam is indeed gone. But he’s left half a pot of coffee and some oatmeal. The good rolled oats kind that taste passable when you add enough brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins. It’s quiet while he eats and catches up on the news, He misses Sam being there and making all the noise he makes, humphing at news stories, sharing the ones he wants Dean to read. It’s boring without him there. Dean is sure Sam’s already in his element, back on campus, getting to teach someone, and to hang out in a library like the true geek he’ll always be. And Jack is likely just happy getting to be with Sam, having his full attention. Dean remembers how stupid jealous he’d been at first, but he’s gotten used to it. And the kind of attention Sam pays to Jack isn’t quite the same as what he gets from Sam.</p><p>Instead of waiting for Sam to come back and ask if he wants his camera back, Dean decides to try and get it working again for him. Or at the very least to retrieve anything that’s still on the memory card. Dean gets the camera out of Baby’s trunk and sets it on one of the library tables. He tracks down an old school usb connector, but the camera won’t recharge or even turn on when its plugged in. He can see that the batteries are all corroded, this was made before the Li-ion batteries were introduced. These were the usual alkaline ones and there had definitely been some moisture in the Impala’s trunk over the last twelve years or so which would have helped the corrosion along.</p><p>Moving onto the memory card then, he’ll try to clean out the battery compartment later, see if he can get the camera itself working or not. It takes a bit to figure out where the memory card even is, but he finally finds the clever little door and quickly has it opened up. He presses and pinches out the card, and is surprised to see that it’s one of the big old original SD cards. That definitely won’t fit into the slot on the side of his laptop. He knows they have a reader converter thingy somewhere. It’s in the same box the old usb connector had been, that miscellaneous box of electronics he’s saved is really coming in handy today.</p><p>He gets the card plugged in to the reader and brings up the files on his laptop screen. What he sees on his screen shocks Dean so completely that he’s unable to move a muscle. He’s frozen with…what…uncertainty or maybe just confusion.</p><p>The memory card is filled with pictures and videos, and all of them are of him. Every single one. Why would Sam have so many pictures of him? He thinks about when exactly he’d gotten this camera for Sam and he soon realizes that Sam was trying to give himself something to hold onto when Dean finally took his trip down to Hell. The sneaky little bastard had videoed him working on the car, singing off-key in the car when he probably thought Sam was asleep, singing even more off-key in the shower when he probably thought Sam was even more asleep.</p><p>Dean flicks through the pictures, wishing there was a picture of Sam on there, and then there—finally, one is up on the screen. One that he didn’t expect. He’s in this one too. Just like all the others, he doesn’t remember Sam asking him if it was okay to take a picture. And he sure as hell would remember taking one like this.</p><p>In the picture there are Christmas lights twinkling in the background, and they’re both snuggled up together on a small, very ugly green couch. He instantly knows that this was the night when Sam had surprised him with doing Christmas after all. He recalls how strong the eggnog Sam had made for him had been. Maybe that was why he doesn’t remember posing for this photo. (<em>sure, Dean blame it on the alcohol)</em>. But then there’s the way he’s snuggled right up to Sam, his head is resting on Sam’s damn chest, his own eyes are closed and he looks so damn content but not asleep or passed-out. Sam’s giant arm is around him, the knuckles white on the hand holding onto Dean’s own bicep. Sam is looking down at him with the fondest expression, no it’s not just fond, it’s something much more than that. <em>(love it’s love, you know it is, Dean—a voice whispers in his ear)</em>.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Dean remembers that night, how they’d opened what they’d thought were their last Christmas presents to each other and Sam had also given him the gift of stopping the conversation before it got too chick-flicky. They’d watched some dumb football game neither of them gave a shit about instead. And they’d kept on drinking Sam’s eggnog. And when that ran out, they’d finished off what was left of the bottle of bourbon. Apparently they’d snuggled up on one couch at some point, and Sam had used the self-timer on the camera to get this picture. He can tell that he’s not passed out. Or maybe he’s just handsy-drunk like Sam gets sometimes. Sam doesn’t look upset about all the contact at all, he looks a million times happier than Dean has seen him in years.</p><p>There’s something about seeing this picture that takes Dean’s breath away. He’s never imagined this sort of softness from Sam. The fondness and blatant love that’s so evident on his brother’s beautiful face and the way he’s holding Dean like he’s precious and special, it’s everything he’s wanted and needed all these years. How had he missed this? Was this really possible between them? And if so, what the hell was he going to do about it?</p><p>Obviously…if he was brutally honest with himself, the possibility of a loving relationship or whatever with Sam was terrifying. It was paralyzing in a way, knowing this unstated, undiscussed thing was maybe right there for the taking and having. Even worse that it maybe had always been there and he’d been oblivious. Was it a thing he wanted, (or even deserved) being loved like that by Sam? He reminds himself that this picture was taken a long, long time ago, twelve years. So much has happened <em>between</em> them and <em>to </em>them, they aren’t the same young men that they were back then. When he searches inside himself, that young man is still in there, buried under the memories of his own stint in Hell, as well as losing Sam to it for his own stint and all the angel and demon stuff that came afterwards.</p><p>Is it still a possibility? And if it is…well what is he going to do about it?</p><p>Dean finds he can’t answer that question, so he prints the photo out on their best photo paper and shuts the laptop lid. This has all been more than enough of memory lane for him today.</p><p>He finds an ornate silver frame in one of the bunker’s miscellaneous household junk storage closets and polishes it up as he thinks about all the questions about Sam and what he might or might not let himself wish for. The intricate swirls and indentations on the frame take a lot of elbow grease to get clean, but as his hands are occupied with the silver polish, his mind wanders, imagining and hoping for things to be clearer. He just wants to know what’s possible. It’s not worth hoping for some big happily ever-after if Sam’s changed his mind since he took this photo.</p><p>He sets the frame up on his desk right next to the one with the picture of the two of them and Bobby, and the one with them as small children and Mom and Dad. It looks good there, the might-have-been of it suits the definitely-were vibes of the pictures of them with Bobby and their parents. It’s probably a good thing that they’re not here to give advice, and honestly he wouldn’t even be considering this if they still were. He decides that he can’t call up any of the people he knows to ask for their advice because they all know Sam, and the crucial fact that Sam is—his brother. Cas probably already has it all figured out in that vague know-it-all angel way that he has, and maybe Jack has as well. Jody would probably freak the fuck out, and any of the other hunters he just doesn’t know well enough to ask about something so personal.</p><p>The more he thinks about talking to someone, the more it becomes clear. There’s really only one person he wants to talk about this with…Sam. He’s the only one that really knows Dean, and vice versa. And if Sam feels even half as much as Dean admits to himself he feels for Sam, then it’s got to be worth the risk. It’s hard to admit that to himself. That he wants this, that he wants to risk screwing up how good it is between them now, just for the chance that they could have a chance at—everything.</p><p>It’s probably going to be down to him deciding to bring it up with Sam. At the risk of well…everything in his life. If he’s wrong, then Sam will leave him, right? He probably should have left for good already really, especially after that whole Dean becoming a demon fiasco. It’s hard to even conceive of a life without his brother as his partner. He can’t imagine doing this whole hunting thing without him, it had been hard enough when he’d gone off to Stanford.</p><p>Dean remembers the conversation they’d just had the night before Sam left to go meet Jack at the university. He remembers the odd smiles he’d gotten from Sam, when he was talking about how he was happy with what he had here. From the context of their conversation, Sam hadn’t just been talking about being happy with their home in the bunker, or the Men of Letters library, he was talking about them—living here together. That’s what those adorable, kind of shy smiles had been about, Dean’s certain of it, deep in his gut where all of this is churning around like the worst and best sort of tornado. It’s too much to keep going around and around about.</p><p>He gets ready for bed and turns out all the lights but his desk lamp. As he lays there, alone and cozy under his blankets, staring at the new (old, twelve years old) picture, the two of them all tangled up together, he lets himself wish. At first it’s just a vague, ‘I wish I knew what to do’ kind of thing. But it soon turns into a more visceral, emphatic, even needy: ‘I need to know if this is possible, if Sam still wants this’. He falls asleep after sending that wish out into the universe. Who knows who’s listening these days, right?</p><p>****<a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a></p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the morning the first thing he sees is his desk lamp, spotlighting the picture he’d printed out last night. He vaguely recalls making that wish before falling asleep. Now he regrets it, because he’s had some experience with hearing things people were compelled to say under a spell or magic of some kind. Not that a plain old wish is magic of course, but he still feels it down to his toes, that need to know for sure, one way or the other.</p><p>He remembers the Veritas truth compulsion spell thing, when he’d gotten Lisa on the phone and she’d just laid it all out there. He’s still got what she said memorized, word for word, “But the minute he walked through that door, I knew. It was over. You two have the most unhealthy, tangled-up, crazy thing I've ever seen. And as long as he's in your life, you're never gonna be happy.” He remembers it all these years later because it had been the truth, the literal truth. Except for the last bit, that had been her interpretation of Sam’s effect on his life. There she couldn’t have much more wrong. Because she didn’t know him. No one really did, except for Sam.</p><p>The very same Sam…who would be coming back today at some point according to the text message he’d just received. The picture attached of Sam and Jack grinning at a table piled high with old books in the college library might be another one to print out and frame. They both looked so damn happy.</p><p>After a quick breakfast and an entire pot of coffee, because Sam isn’t there to give him a hard time about it, Dean goes back to the computer he’d been working at last night. The SD card reader is still plugged in, and the card from Sam’s camera is still in the slot. He boots it up and settles in to copy over the contents to their picture archive that Sam set up in the cloud along with all their research on hunts. He remembers how confusing that had been at first, the pictures aren’t on hard media like this SD card, they’re floating around in a cloud that they can access anywhere, whenever they need them. Sam had said something about how if everything burned down, then they’d still have what was in the cloud.</p><p>Not that the bunker is burning down anytime soon, but it has been under attack more than a few times, and they’d almost died there when Ketch had locked them in that one time. Dean checks through the files stored in their dropbox account, and he sees that there’s plenty of room to upload this small file in comparison to the group of pictures and videos. These old style SD cards didn’t hold all that much. He creates a sub folder in the pictures folder titled: “Sam’s Sneaky Pics” and hits the button to start the upload.</p><p>As they all begin to flicker past as they upload, one after the other, he remembers that he’d gotten stuck on that one picture last night and hadn’t looked at the rest. He clicks through each one that comes after the Christmas picture, and they’re all pretty boring, as in they’re all just him doing various mundane things. But then there’s a series of Sam selfies, but his brother is out of focus. Dean looks more closely and in the background of each one he sees himself and it looks like he’s posing, like a model or something. Mostly he knows he was just standing around, leaning up against the car, waiting for Sam to stop fooling with the camera. He vaguely recalls being irritated about the camera back then. Why hadn’t he asked to get a picture of the two of them, like a normal person? Then he thinks a bit more, it would have been strange, because they never did things like that, they never stopped to memorialize or intentionally make a memory of someone or some place, because their life was always on the move and one moment away from being over. Only now when they’ve been settled in the bunker for six years he can actually see how much their life has changed. <em>Their</em> life—as in the one they live together.</p><p>That need to know roars up again through his whole body, startling him with the intensity of the feeling. He wishes Sam was back home already. Not like he’d be blurting out the question or anything, but at least the possibility of asking would be there, maybe Sam will even say something when he sees this new Dropbox folder. He stands up from the worktable abruptly, pushing his chair back, grating loud against the floor in the silence. It’s too damn quiet in here, making him twitchy with noticing he’s alone. He crosses to the record player and thumbs through his albums, settling on Led Zeppelin’s last studio album, “In Through the Out Door”.  Jimmy Page wailing away on the Gizmotron in the beginning of the first song, “In The Evening” always gets him going.</p><p>Then somehow he’s drinking whisky and flipping the album over to the second side, finally letting himself stand up and go full-on air guitar for the last song “I’m Gonna Crawl” mostly to do that epic guitar solo.</p><p>Of course that’s when Sam comes home. When he’s screaming and singing along with Robert Plant about my baby giving me good lovin’.</p><p>“She’s lucky,” someone says when the song is over.</p><p>Dean looks up in surprise to hear a voice, but it’s Sam, of course it is. He’s standing on the stairs halfway down. How long he’s been there, Dean has no idea. His whisky glass is empty so he refills it and slugs down a good third of it, trying to get himself together. He’s not even close to drunk enough to be ready for this.</p><p>“You’re back early,” Dean finally manages to say.</p><p>Sam restarts making his way down the stairs, approaching slowly, almost seeming to be wary. Dean can see that he’s focusing on the whisky of the situation. Oh here it comes, just what he needs, Sam mother-henning the shit out of him over his drinking habits.</p><p>“And you’re drinking kind of early,” Sam says, eyebrows raised in a question, like he’s not sure if he should be worried, mad, or laughing—or all three at once.</p><p>Dean ignores it, because probably all of the above would suit the situation, and he’s in no mood to get into the details of why he’s getting his drink on so early in the day. “Where’s Jack?”</p><p>“Cas picked him up when we were done at the school, they’re off on a possible vampire nest hunt up near Saint Cloud.”</p><p>“Minnesota or Wisconsin? Why didn’t you go with them?”</p><p>Sam doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, probably deciding whether or not to bring up the drinking subject again. “Minnesota, so I didn’t go with them because we were supposed to be taking a few weeks off from hunting. So, uh…I’m gonna go unpack, get some laundry started.”</p><p>When he’s almost out of the room, Dean speaks to Sam’s retreating back, “Glad you’re back, Sammy.”</p><p>Sam stops in the doorway, puts a big hand out on the doorframe to turn himself back. He looks Dean over, head to toe and back again, the first pass is the usual scan to see if he’s physically okay, the second pass…Dean isn’t sure what that’s for really. Then Sam smiles, slow and deliberate until his dimples pop out so clearly Dean can spot them from across the room. Are purposeful dimples a thing?</p><p>“Me too, Dean.”</p><p>****</p><p><br/><br/>After unpacking Sam discovers he doesn’t have quite enough for a load of laundry on his own so he does the brotherly thing and heads into Dean’s room to grab some of his brother’s stuff to add in with his. The desk lamp has been left on, and it’s shining on a picture in an ornate silver frame that he’s never seen. He drops his laundry basket in the doorway when he focuses on the photo instead of the frame. A sudden cold wash of fear courses through him so quickly he almost falls to his knees.</p><p><em>Dean knows</em>—he’s got to know it all now, no wonder he was drinking at ten in the morning. How the hell is he ever going to explain this?</p><p>If Dean has found this picture, that must mean that he must have found the videos also…somehow. Oh shit…did Dean watch <em>that video</em>? Of course he has to have by now. Sam knows just how curious and incorrigible his brother is, never respecting his privacy no matter how many times he’s put up a fuss about it. Sam’s not too worried about most of the pictures and videos, but he knows that there’s one video that he’d taken, almost at the end of the year Dean had bargained for that will blow everything up. He knew he should have deleted it, but couldn’t make himself do it back then, he’d needed something to hold onto, and then he’d lost track of the damn camera.</p><p>He remembers how Dean had been passed out cold in bed, after a night of bar hopping. He’d come back to the motel room, and the worry lines on his face were still there, and it had made Sam’s heart just ache with the pain his brother was carrying on his own. After Dean had passed out for the night, Sam had made a video of himself crawling under the covers with Dean, holding him tight, spooning him like they were lovers, kissing the side of his face, whispering that he loved him. He never should have done something like that, much less filmed it, and now Dean knows what an absolute creep he is.</p><p>Before Sam has a chance to form a plan, or decide what to do, he hears the Impala start up in the garage and take off.</p><p>Oh god—Dean’s gone, he’s left him, just as Sam had always figured he would if he had ever discovered the truth about what Sam’s been hiding all these years. And he’s maybe too drunk to drive too, shit this is worse than he’d thought it would be. He crumples down, landing on Dean’s bed, trying and failing to control his emotions. The tears come and they don’t stop, he’s near sobbing, holding it in and gasping into Dean’s pillow, the scent of his brother making him even sadder at this loss, this rendering and tearing asunder of everything that’s ever mattered.</p><p>He wishes he could take it back, put it back in the dark where it belongs. But that last year they’d had, when they both knew Dean was going to Hell forever, he’d let himself take what he thought he’d need to survive the loss. They were only photos, moments in time, and the videos were only a few moments strung together. In the scheme of their life together, it wasn’t that big of a thing. And he knew, even then, that his big brother would give him anything, he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to make Dean sad by asking for photo-taking permission. That was how he’d rationalized it to himself back then and it still worked now.</p><p>He opens his bleary eyes and sees the picture in the beautiful frame again, lit up by the desk lamp, like an accusatory spotlight of all his internal crimes. He closes his eyes against the happiness and joy on his face in the photo. Having Dean in his arms like that had been Heaven, a memory he was planning to hold onto when his brother was gone. Just like he is now.</p><p>That starts the tears up again, he can’t help it, he feels so bad that Dean found out, he was never supposed to, not ever. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his brother, he just wanted to love him.</p><p>The bed dips behind him and someone sighs.</p><p><br/>Sam rolls over in complete surprise, he thought he was still alone in the bunker.</p><p>“There a reason you’re on my bed, soaking my pillow?” Dean asks in a husky whisper that tells Sam he’s affected by his little brother’s crying, no matter how depraved or disgusting he might be.</p><p>Sam dares a glance at Dean’s face and sees only confusion and worry.</p><p>“I thought you left,” Sam manages to say.</p><p>“I did, to get groceries, I want to try out a rib recipe I read about online,” Dean says, all matter of fact, obviously trying to get them back onto normal ground. “Seriously, though, are you okay, Sammy?”</p><p>A warm hand lands on Sam’s shoulder and he’s barely able to stop himself from crying in relief. He glances over at the desk, the lamp highlighting the picture of them in the frame. “You’re not mad about the pictures and uh…stuff?”</p><p>Dean tracks where Sam is looking and seems to understand. “What, no, of course not,” Dean says in a rush. “I thought it was kind of sweet.”</p><p>“Sweet?” Sam asks, unable to process the word, it doesn’t match up at all with the depravity of what he’s done, with what Dean knows he’s done to him—to them.</p><p>“Sammy, I understand okay? I get it, all the pictures and videos of me. You were trying to make like a scrapbook thing, for yourself to remember me by, when I was headed to Hell. And it’s okay, it really is, I understand.”</p><p>“Even that one video though?” Sam asks, voice trailing off to a near whisper.</p><p>“Which, the one where I’m singing in the shower?” Dean asks.</p><p>Sam doesn’t answer, is that the “worst” one as far as Dean is concerned? Should he fess up? Maybe Dean didn’t watch all of them, could he possibly be that lucky?</p><p>“I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have…not without asking you if it was okay with you,” Sam says.</p><p>“I’m telling you, you don’t need to be sorry, okay?” Dean says, squeezing Sam’s shoulder gently. “I probably shouldn’t have been snooping in your camera.”</p><p>“Where’d you find it?” Sam asks.</p><p>“I was ripping out the carpet in Baby’s trunk, and there it was in one of the hidey holes.”</p><p>“Does it really still work after all this time?” Sam asks.</p><p>“Batteries are fully corroded, so I have no idea. But as you can see,” Dean points at the photo in the silver frame. “The memory card was still good.”</p><p>“That’s a beautiful frame, where’d you get it?” Sam asks, desperate to change the subject.</p><p>“It was in one of the storage rooms, in a box of miscellaneous household kind of stuff. I shined it up a little, thought it went with the lamp pretty well.”</p><p>“Why’d you print this one photo out?” Sam asks.</p><p>“I didn’t have a good one of the two of us, to go with my other pictures that I’ve got there…uh, I’m gonna go get started on those ribs, they take a while so I want to get them going,” Dean says, standing up quickly and heading out the door before Sam can say anything in response.</p><p>Sam gets up slowly, feeling like he’s been beaten and run over by a truck, crying like that is exhausting. He’s so confused right now, going from expecting the very worst, to being comforted by the person who he’d thought was gone for good is a little much to take. He picks up the picture frame, feels its solid weight and turns it around in his hands. There’s a carved inscription on the bottom. He can’t make it out so he holds it under the desk lamp.</p><p>He can make out some words that look like latin: <em>cupio, voveo e precor</em>. He quickly translates it to <em>desire</em>, and two ways to say <em>pray for</em>. He’s pretty sure this isn’t just a beautiful frame, but something that does something with desires or prayers. But what…grants them? Is it like wishing on a genie’s lamp? And at what cost?</p><p>Sam sets the frame back down and flips the switch turning off the desk lamp. He retrieves his laundry basket, fills it up the rest of the way with some of Dean’s stuff and heads off to get the laundry started like he had intended all that time ago. It seems like a lifetime, all that anguish for maybe nothing. He angrily sets the buttons on the machine and tosses in too much soap, wash it away, clean it away like it wasn’t ever there. Nothing to deal with, see? All back to normal, all the nastiness hidden away where it belongs, where it needs to stay.</p><p>***<a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a></p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I liked that picture you texted me. How did Jack take to the whole college scene?” Dean asks through a mouthful of rib meat.</p><p>Sam shakes his head slightly to dislodge that image. “He did okay, definitely comes off as a newbie freshman type which is handy when you’re trying to disarm the library staff. He got to the good stuff pretty quickly, which is what I wanted him to see.”</p><p>“You’re a good teacher,” Dean says.</p><p>“You are too,” Sam says, it almost sounds like a challenge.</p><p>“Did you pick up any admission brochures while you were there?” Dean asks, not taking the challenge.</p><p>“For who, Jack?”</p><p>“Sure, I guess, or…you know, you?”</p><p>Sam sighs, that long-suffering-wife kind of sigh that makes Dean feel simultaneous happiness at their connection and dread for what comes next.</p><p>“Dean, we already talked about this, before I left, remember?”</p><p>“That was the other day though. I know how it goes, when you’re back in a place, and all the memories come back, and you maybe change your mind. Which would be totally okay by the way,” Dean says.</p><p>Sam puts down the rib he was about to finish and wipes his hands on his napkin, slow and thorough, like he’s gathering his thoughts, or thinking of getting up and leaving. Dean isn’t sure what would be better.</p><p>“Look, I couldn’t have been clearer the other day, and nothing changed for me by being back on a college campus. I’m not interested in college anymore, I’m happy with where I am and what I’m doing, and who I’m doing it with. For some reason you’re not believing me, and that’s up to you I guess. So what’s this really about?”</p><p>“Just checking, I always think you can do better than settling for this,” Dean waves a hand to indicate himself and the bunker.</p><p>“Oh, I see, just like you’ve settled for this,” Sam imitates his all-inclusive wave.</p><p>“It’s not settling, it’s just life,” Dean says.</p><p>“So it’s perfectly okay for you to ‘settle', but it’s not okay for me to do the same, for whatever reason you’ve come up with?” Sam asks.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess,” Dean says. “Sorry, long force of habit and all that big brother stuff.”</p><p>“I thought we’d grown out of this by now,” Sam says.</p><p>“Guess not, I mean looking back at those photos from twelve years ago brought it all back again. We’re very different people now, so much has changed, but we’re still…” Dean trails off, not sure whether to say together or tangled-up or stuck or some other word that means all three. <em>Soulmate…</em>his heart whispers.</p><p>“That we are, and I can’t imagine it being any other way,” Sam says, almost as if he heard all of the word choice options.</p><p>Dean stops mid-chew and stares at Sam for what he knows is an abnormal length of time. Because he can imagine it being a whole lot of other ways. Like Sam having left the million times he probably should have, or one of them staying dead one of the million times they’d died, or if they were together in a way more like that Christmas photo Sam had taken and he’d printed out. “I can,” Dean says, finally settling for short and sweet and good and vague.</p><p>“Tell me,” Sam says, the little brother demanding lilt at the end of the word ‘me’.</p><p>“I…I…uh, can’t do that,” Dean says, reluctantly conjuring up the big brother finality he knows this moment requires. He can’t just say it, it’s not in him, even though he wants to more than anything. If only he knew for sure what Sam felt.</p><p>“Why’d you really print out that photo, Dean?” Sam asks, tilting his head slightly, looking at Dean so steadily that Dean has a chance to notice the red puffiness still left around Sam’s eyes from his earlier crying jag.</p><p>Dean gets up from the table and grabs his plate. He stalks over to the sink and starts the water flowing. The water noise against the sink blessedly filling up the silence. He dumps the rib bones in the trash and startles when he feels Sam’s hand on his shoulder. He turns slowly towards Sam, and he’s right there, practically pressed up against him, that big hand a warm and welcome weight on his shoulder.</p><p>“Please, I want to know,” Sam says.</p><p>“I don’t know if I can really explain it well enough,” Dean admits, finally meeting Sam’s eyes and attempting to sort out all the conflicting emotions he can see there.</p><p>“Okay then, in case it might help, you probably should know that the frame that you used, it might be a wish-granting thing. There’s a latin inscription on the bottom that translates to ‘what you desire most—pray for it’,” Sam says, a matter-of-factness lays over the top of his sadness in not getting an explanation from Dean. “It may just be completely ornamental, like a motto inscribed or it may be something more powerful. Since you found it here in the bunker, I’m guessing it’s the latter.”</p><p>“Oh shit…I didn’t even think to look,” Dean says, voice trailing off as he thinks about exactly how hard he’d been wishing last night as he’d fallen asleep.</p><p>“Did you make a wish or a prayer after you put the photo in the frame? Or maybe while you were holding it?” Sam asks, that matter-of-factness still there up front, blocking all the rest of the emotions that Sam’s obviously struggling to keep hidden.</p><p>Dean watches his brother closely while he briefly thinks about lying about what he’s done. And he just can’t do it, not when he sees through the wall Sam is trying to throw up. His brother needs the truth this time. And he knows he needs it himself too. “Yeah, I uh…yeah I did,” Dean admits, heart heavy with the dread that hits him, now he’s going to have to answer, there’s no way out of it this time.</p><p>“What was it that you wished for?” Sam persists, amazing in his resolve.</p><p>Dean takes a deep breath and prepares to try and b.s. his way out of this even though he knows it probably won’t work. “I wished to know if that was possible, how we were…together in the photo, and if you still wanted that,” Dean says all in a rush. He clasps his hands over his mouth, shocked that he’d said it out loud. Was that how everyone had felt under that Veritas spell when he’d been getting the truth, like it or not?</p><p>“Wow, okay, tell it to me straight out. Maybe it’s the frame making you speak so plainly, I don’t know. But to answer you, yeah, it is,” Sam says, his eyes challenging and intense, like he’s willing Dean to just even try to not believe him.</p><p>“Sammy—I…” Dean is stunned into incoherence. To have truth answering truth, it’s so unlike them, and maybe it’s the spell or something else, but it’s really too much.</p><p>“Did you watch all the videos?” Sam asks, a shadow of fear clouding his face for a moment.</p><p>“No, only like two or three of them, they took a while to load because of the old SD card format,” Dean says, wondering why the heck Sam’s even asking.</p><p>“Here…come on, let me show you, since I can tell you don’t believe me,” Sam says, big hand on Dean’s lower back, steering him out of the kitchen and back to the work room. He boots up the computer and clicks around until he’s got one of the videos loading. Sam presses him down into the chair in front of the computer and stands behind him, both hands on his shoulders like he’s making sure Dean won’t run.</p><p>The video starts, and it’s pretty dark and grainy, the setting is one of a zillion nondescript, crappy motel rooms. The camera jiggles and then settles as Sam sets it down, leaving it aimed at one of the beds. Dean can see himself, either asleep or passed out in that bed. Sam comes into view, strips down to his boxers and climbs under the covers. <em>With him</em>.</p><p>Dean watches as he sleeps through (or is passed-out through) his brother manhandling him into his arms, petting through his hair, stroking his face. Then the whispering starts.</p><p>The real Sam that’s standing behind him now, leans over his shoulder and turns up the volume on the laptop. Dean manages to control the shiver that comes as Sam’s hair brushes the side of his face and ear.</p><p>He can hear the video now, there’s the ambient sound of trucks passing by on a highway, the shake and rattle of the motel windows, then Sam’s voice, whispering and hesitant but filled with tender conviction. “I love you so much, Dean. I always have, more than you’ll ever know. I’ll never stop. You’re it for me, everything I want and everything I need. I wish you knew. Fuck…I wish I could tell you.”</p><p>The video stops on its own, probably some internal time limit for the file size, but Dean never wants it to end. He’s pretty sure he could watch that on repeat for the rest of his life.</p><p><br/>“That enough of an answer for you?” Sam asks in a hoarse whisper.</p><p>Dean looks up at him, upside down it’s hard to tell if Sam’s crying again or maybe about to. “No, only answered half of my question. That was then, this is now.”</p><p>Sam’s answer is a smile, slow and wide, with early and deep dimple involvement. Dean turns around in the chair, loving the feeling of Sam’s hands not letting go, but skimming along his back and still staying on his shoulders.</p><p>“Well?” Dean asks, standing up so that they’re face-to-face, in each other’s personal space, which is only right for something as momentous as this suddenly feels.</p><p>Sam clenches one hand and then the other on Dean’s shoulders, like he’s reminding himself that he’s still touching Dean. He looks up to the corner of the big room, and takes a big breath that expands his chest. God, he’s just so big now, Dean’s hands move on their own accord, instinctively finding their place on Sam’s hips.</p><p>Sam’s eyes flick down to where Dean’s hands are resting on his body and slowly track up until they meet Dean’s own. He can see it as Sam decides to answer, the courage and determination take over from the hesitance and fear. It fills his face and this is Sam, this is his amazing Sam who’s stood up to Lucifer and Chuck and everyone else. This is his brother trusting him that he can handle the truth.</p><p>“Back then, I loved you like a teenager loves his first crush, I didn’t let it go too much beyond that, I couldn’t let myself. I almost did that year…you know, the one before you went to Hell. I mean, you can see it in the photos and videos that I was taking, right? But I chickened out, didn’t think I’d survive losing you as just a brother, if we’d been anything further past that…let’s just say you wouldn’t have had much to come back to.”</p><p>“What about now though?” Dean asks, heart in his throat, stomach clenching with the fear of what’s next.</p><p>“Now, it’s different, I mean, like you said, we’re different people after everything we’ve been through,” Sam says.</p><p>“Together, we’ve been through it <em>together</em>. That’s the important part to me,” Dean offers, he squeezes his hands a little harder into Sam’s hips, his thumbs settling into the grooves at the top of Sam’s hip bones, what a moment to realize that they’re a perfect fit. Like Sam was made for him and vice versa.</p><p>“Me too, absolutely. But there’s important life-changing stuff we’ve been through on our own too, like your time in Purgatory, and mine in the Cage. And what we were doing when the other one was gone, that changed us too.”</p><p>“True, but we always come back together, like we’re supposed to be,” Dean says.</p><p>“It’s better than that though, more than just being together because we’re supposed to be. It’s not just some bullshit fated soulmates thing where we have no agency. We chose it, Dean. Over and over again, we’ve made that choice, a lot of times when we should have probably chosen differently. We still choose each other, Dean. We choose to be together, every single time. That’s how I see it, that’s what’s most important to me. Every time I see you choose me, it…well it makes me love you even more.” Sam’s eyes finally overflow, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks, filling up his dimples.</p><p>“Aww, Sammy, c’mon, you’re getting your goddamned dimples wet,” Dean says, hugging him closely, one arm wrapped around Sam’s lower back, one reaching up across the expanse of his upper back to his shoulder. Sam does that impossible thing of making himself small enough to tuck his face into the crook of Dean’s neck. Dean’s heart is on fire now, he can feel it pumping fast, the excitement of hearing his brother’s words almost too much.</p><p>“We’ve wasted so much time,” Sam whispers into the skin of Dean’s neck. He feels weak when his whole body flushes hot at the feeling of Sam’s soft lips moving against his skin like a kiss in motion.</p><p>“None of it’s been wasted, little brother, not a damn second. Not if it finally brought us here,” Dean says, rubbing his hands in a circle in the center of Sam’s wide back. The flannel under his hands feels super-heated, like Sam’s skin is going to burst through demanding a touch from Dean’s fingertips.</p><p>“Is this just you and me, or is it the picture frame?” Sam whispers into the skin of Dean’s neck. “Is it real?”</p><p>“It is real, it’s you and me choosing us again. I just wished for the truth, to know the truth, not for something to happen between us. And before I even found that frame, I wanted this, whatever comes next here, you gotta know that I wanted it more than anything, Sammy,” Dean says, baring his heart for the sharpness that Sam can always wield against him. He doesn’t know or care if it’s brave or stupid, he’s finally taking the chance.</p><p>Sam pulls back from the hug, but he’s still holding him, giant arms over Dean’s shoulders, one hand on the back of Dean’s head. “Guess I can’t believe it can just be this easy,” Sam says.</p><p>“Nothing ever is for us, true true, but like you said, we’ve had a lifetime of practice, choosing each other.”</p><p>“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?” Sam asks.</p><p>“That’s what I’m doing, yeah,” Dean says.</p><p>“Even if it changes everything?” Sam asks.</p><p>“Yeah, even if,” Dean answers. “Maybe it won’t really change much, who knows.”</p><p>Sam doesn’t say anything at all in response, in fact he goes quiet and his face kind of shutters so that Dean can’t tell what he’s thinking. “Hey…uh, if you need time to think about it or something, I understand, man. Maybe it’s asking for too much too fast,” Dean says in a rush.</p><p>“No…No! That’s not my hesitation, not at all, Dean, please don’t think that.”</p><p>“Well, what the hell am I supposed to think here?” Dean asks.</p><p>“It’s not you, or even you and me…” Sam trails off, looking embarrassed at not being able to spit out what he’s trying to say.</p><p>“Let me guess, it’s everyone else, and what they’re gonna think?” Dean suggests.</p><p>“Yeah, I know it’s stupid, but yeah,” Sam admits, nodding so that his hair falls and covers one eye.</p><p>“Listen, a lot of them already think this about us, or at least they wonder. We’re way closer than any brothers…probably ever. And it’s just none of their damn business, don’t ask-don’t tell, right?”</p><p>“I guess,” Sam says.</p><p>“You’re mostly worried about Jack,” Dean says, voice flat because he knows this will be the sticking point. He should have thought of an answer to this.</p><p>“How do we even…I mean, we’re trying to be like parents to Jack, teach him right from wrong and all of that. And we’d be giving ourselves a pass on the whole incest thing because…why exactly? How would we explain it to him?”</p><p>“Would we need to? Would he even really care? Doesn’t he want us to be happy?” Dean asks, throwing all the heat and emotion into his challenge that he can muster.</p><p>“Sure, of course he wants us to be happy, and maybe it wouldn’t even bother him because he sees everything so differently than we do. But we’re supposedly trying to teach him human rules and taboos, etcetera.”</p><p>“What were you teaching him today, at the college?” Dean asks.</p><p>“How to break human rules and lie his way into the restricted collection,” Sam answers.</p><p>“And what were you showing him, in the police history files online the other day?”</p><p>“The same kind of thing,” Sam answers.</p><p>“So we’ve been showing him how we break all the rules, day in day out, when we have a good reason that’s worth it. Don’t we have the mother of all good reasons here?”</p><p>“You mean how much we love each other?” Sam asks, licking at his lips nervous and shy at saying the words.</p><p>Dean nods, not sure if he can take another second of this. He steps away and walks to his room, because he’s not sure he can say anything else to change Sam’s mind. He gets that answered when Sam doesn’t try to stop him, or follow him. The desk lamp is off, so he switches it back on, he touches the picture frame and then places it face down, flat on the desk. He doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to moon over it any more. If it’s not happening, then so be it, moving on. But at least he knows now. Maybe it would have been better not to know for sure. The knowledge of what was possible might just kill him if he lets it. Even though it’s pretty early he gets undressed and slips into bed, puts his headphones on, and tries to tune out, maybe sleep will make his heart stop aching like it is, maybe Sam will change his mind overnight. Maybe he can just forget this all happened. Maybe.</p><p>****</p><p>
  
</p><p>Dean wakes up, someone is in his room with him, he can feel it. He can’t hear it, because 10cc is still playing on his headphones. He switches them off.</p><p>“Dean?” Sam asks from the direction of the doorway.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Can I talk to you?”</p><p>“I’m all talked out, Sam. How about tomorrow?” Even in his sleepy state he knows it’ll hurt Sam, not hearing his nickname. Maybe it’s petty, but it’s all the protection he’s got left at the moment.</p><p>“Okay, sorry I woke you up. Want me to turn off the light?” Sam asks, hovering over the desk lamp. Surely he’s seen the picture frame is face down, and who knows what he thinks that means.</p><p>Dean grunts, not wanting to talk or wake up much more than he already has. The room goes dark when Sam flips off the desk lamp. He watches through slitted eyes as Sam closes the door behind him, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Dean switches 10cc back on and tries to sink back into sleep.</p><p>It doesn’t work.</p><p>****<br/><a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a></p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>*****</p><p>He tries for a while, and gives up, throws his headphones off to the foot of the bed and gets up wrapping a robe around himself, finding his slippers. He heads to the kitchen to clean up after the dinner they’d left out.</p><p>
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</p><p>The kitchen is spotless, all the food’s been put away, the pots and pans are in the drying rack, the dishwasher is humming. He gets the pie out of the fridge that he’d bought for their dessert. Cuts himself a big slice, pours himself a tumbler of the whisky he keeps in the kitchen for “cooking” purposes and sits at the table. Alone at night this place has a certain low tone, a hum of all the systems working that he’s always loved. It’s soothing, like being on a big ship, cutting through the darkness smooth and sure. The store-bought pie is tasteless and bland so he mostly sticks with the whisky.</p><p>He hears soft footsteps and a surprised noise at the doorway. Sam hovers there, uncertain which just kills him. This is how it’s going to be for a while. Until they sort themselves back out again. They’ve done it before after drastic things, but never after something they did to themselves. We chose this. To stay apart for the being who is basically our son. It’s going to be okay, because it has to be.</p><p>“Hey,” Dean says, not saying Sam or Sammy, leaving it ambiguous for now. Until he sees what his brother has decided (or not). He stares into the amber liquid in his glass and wishes he could dive into it and not come up for a while.</p><p>“Hey,” Sam answers, crossing to the electric kettle, he starts it going and riffles through the box of assorted tea bags Rowena had left with them last time. Something about needing to have a ‘proper cuppa’ available from the heathens.</p><p>“We sure that tea is only tea?” Dean asks.</p><p>“Pretty sure,” Sam says, not turning around. His shoulders are his brooding shoulders, just like Chuck had written all those years ago. He’s suddenly so exhausted with all of this strife.</p><p>“Those are your brooding and pensive shoulders, you okay?” Dean asks.</p><p>Sam’s shoulders shake just the slightest amount of movement, and Dean swears he hears a faint chuckle which gives him the teeniest bit of hope. Hey, at least he’s not crying this time, right?</p><p>“Yeah, they are, I’ve been thinking,” Sam says, still fiddling with the tea stuff.</p><p>“Of course you were, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Dean jokes, swigging down another third of his whisky.</p><p>Sam turns around and leans against the counter. “I didn’t like how we left things.”</p><p>“Me either, that’s probably why we’re both in the kitchen in the middle of the night.”</p><p>“We need to…” Sam trails off, seeming to run out of words.</p><p>“We need to what, talk about it? What’s the point, you feel the way you feel about the Jack thing. I’m not going to try and talk you out of it, because you’re probably right. We’ll just carry on like nothing happened,” Dean says, leaving out the part about having to stuff his broken heart back in, hide all of it again.</p><p>“That’s not what I want to do though,” Sam says, eyes shimmering with unshed tears.</p><p>It’s been a whole damn day of Sam’s tears, Dean can’t bear it. “Then tell me what you want to do. We gotta get clear on this,” Dean says with a sigh, gesturing at the seat across from him.</p><p>Sam brings his tea mug and sits down, arranges himself and eventually looks up at Dean, a determined look on his face. “I want to ask him. When he comes back. But only if that’s okay with you,” Sam says.</p><p>“You’re going to ask Jack what exactly?” Dean asks, slow and deliberate, trying to imagine how that conversation would go.</p><p>Sam takes a deep breath and then spills what he’s been holding inside. “I’m going to tell him our whole story, all the stuff we haven’t shared with him. I’m going to tell him about all the times we’ve chosen each other, and the soulmate stuff too, because he doesn’t know all of that. And I think he’d need to know all of that to even begin to understand why we’d break this big human taboo. After that, I’ll ask him if he’d understand if we wanted to be together.”</p><p>“Like asking him permission?” Dean asks.</p><p>“No, not permission, it’d be more like a blessing I guess,” Sam says with a shrug of his shoulders that is anything but casual.</p><p>“I…okay, sure, go ahead and try it, why the hell not,” Dean says, sadder then he’d been before, his brother is such a goddamn hero, sacrificing the possibility of being happy just to do the proverbial “right thing”.</p><p>“Why does that make you sad?” Sam asks.</p><p>“You having to ask anyone besides yourself for the permission to have the thing that’d make you happiest. Because you have to be Mr. Perfect and always do the right thing, be a good example or whatever. And I’d be just fine saying screw it, because I’m a selfish s.o.b. and a shit parent.”</p><p>“Dean, c’mon, you’re not a shit parent, cut it out with the self pity b.s.,” Sam says.</p><p>“You know what, Sam, on second thought, as his other parent, I’m gonna say no, don’t tell him a damn thing about all this. It’ll mess him up knowing he’s going to be the one standing in the way of us having a chance at maybe being happy together. Why would you want to put that all on him?”</p><p>Sam’s sharp intake of breath surprises both of them. “Oh…oh god, you’re right,” Sam says. “I can’t do that to him.”</p><p>“Well, there you go, good talk,” Dean says. He stands up from the table, stalks to the sink leaving his pie plate and whisky glass. He walks out of the room, not waiting around for more words or tears or whatever else Sam is going to come up with, he’s done for tonight.</p><p>“Dean?” Sam asks, as he’s almost through the doorway.</p><p>Dean stops on the top step, pausing to hear what’s next even though it’s the last thing he wants to do right now. He can’t bear to turn around and face his brother.</p><p>“I’m really sorry,” Sam says, sounding broken and lost.</p><p>“Me too, Sam, me too,” Dean says, one hundred percent unsure that they’re sorry about the same things. He walks away down the hall slow and deliberate, quietly closing his door, then locking it behind him. He needs to be alone with this, at least for the rest of the night. Needs to have time to reassemble himself into a working facsimile of the Dean Winchester everyone is used to. Can it be possible that Sam will let them carry on normally tomorrow?</p><p>****</p><p>The next morning, Dean wakes up later than usual. He’s muzzy from all the hoo-hah in the middle of the night and tries to not get out of the muffled state of mind. He doesn’t want to deal with any of it or think about where things stand until he’s absolutely forced to. Sam’s not around, probably out running or something, but at least he left a half a pot of coffee on the warmer. He finishes that off with some eggs and toast and heads to the garage to finish up the work he was doing on Baby’s trunk. It seems like weeks and weeks ago he’d been yanking out carpet. So much has changed and so much is still the same.</p><p>There’s a pile of the carpet scraps behind her, he drags an empty garbage can over, enjoying the racket of the metal scraping on the cement floor of the garage. He sighs and gets a ‘working in the garage’ playlist going on his phone to fill up the silence. He gets his gloves on, and slowly loads up all the carpet pieces until the can is most of the way filled up. He unlocks Baby’s trunk and pulls up the lid until it stops and holds. He turns the stand light on to have the extra light as he’s working with an X-Acto knife to cut away the carpet that’s still stubbornly clinging to the painted metal of Baby’s trunk.</p><p>The playlist ends and automatically restarts, and he’s almost done, one last section towards the far back on the passenger side. His gloved fingers slide into and through an almost invisible X that someone else had made in the very last piece of carpet. They end up resting inside a small hollow behind the carpet. There’s something in there (of course there is, Baby is chock full o’ surprises) and he grips it with two fingers, slowly pulling it back out through the X in the carpet. Is it going to be Dad or Sam related—he has no idea, and no preference really at this point. Either is going to rip up what’s left of the hamburger that is his heart this morning.</p><p>The thing in his fingers looks like a hex bag, it’s a small piece of some type of animal hide, softened and treated into flexibility. It’s gathered up at the top into a small pouch, stitched through several times with what looks like the thick black thread used in gris gris bags. He holds it in the palm of his gloved hand and can feel the power of the thing thrumming into his skin. It doesn’t feel like a bad thing, just very powerful, and why the hell was it in his car? How long has it been in there?</p><p>He knows he should wait until Sam comes back to open the thing up. But he’s curious, and honestly, he’s still prickly as hell and doesn’t want to seek him out quite yet. He sets it on Baby’s hood and watches as the vibrations travel into the car and stop. It’s almost like it’s  tuned to her, maybe even made for her, is that even a thing?</p><p>When did they first encounter these spell bags? It had been Missouri Mosley, when she showed them how to make the bags to get rid of the poltergeist in their old home. There’d been a few other types of bags over the years they’d learned about too, used either for luck or hexes. Could this be something Missouri had made for their dad to keep their car safe since it was practically their home back then? He picks the thing back up and looks at it more closely. There are markings on the hide, that look like they’d bled through from the other side. Now he knows he has to open it up. He’s about to pull on one end of dangling black string when he stops—interrupted by the sound of a truck pulling into the garage.</p><p>He looks up and confirms that Cas and Jack are back. Jack grins at him through the truck’s windshield and waves. Dean puts the bag back down on Baby’s hood and waves back. He schools his face into something he hopes looks close to normal and tries his best not to think or feel anything about what happened yesterday.</p><p>“Hi, Dean, we’re back!” Jack yells as he gets out of the truck.</p><p>“How’d it go with the vampires?” Dean asks, smiling because Jack’s enthusiasm for the hunt and going places as well as coming home is something he knows he has managed to pass on to him.</p><p>“There weren’t any,” Jack says, sounding disappointed.</p><p>“It was instead a very confused high schooler, in what he called ‘vampire-training’. We got him to the proper authorities,” Cas says.</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you guys went and checked it out,” Dean says, pausing the music playback on his phone.</p><p>“What are you doing to Baby?” Jack asks.</p><p>Dean grins at Jack’s use of his pet name for the car. “I’m fixing up the carpet in her trunk. It got wet when we had that leak a few months ago. Remember when Garth was stuck in there for so long? He messed up some of the weather stripping seals that keep water out. Sam was complaining about it making our duffle bags smell musty.”</p><p>“Another thing off the honey-do list,” Jack says.</p><p>“What did you say?” Dean asks, whipping around to see if Jack is joking.</p><p>Jack looks surprised at his response. “Honey-do list, like in that Foghat song we were listening to last week in the car.”</p><p>Dean raises his eyebrows, he’d forgotten about Jack’s near-perfect recall because it’s seriously a little bit scary.</p><p>Jack sings the chorus, perfectly on key of course, “Honey do list, honey do that, honey do this and do it just like that, do it just like that.”</p><p>Dean’s not sure what to say or how to react, because Jack’s right, that’s the chorus of the song. And whether he’s admitted it to himself or not, that’s definitely what fixing the carpet was, a honey-do list thing. But the rest of that song’s lyrics are all about what else is on that couple’s honey-do list. As in <em>doing each other</em>, wait—is that how Jack thinks of Sam and him?</p><p>“Is that…uh, how you think of Sam and me, like the people in that song?” Dean asks, dreading the answer, this is going to be as bad as having to give Sam the birds and bees talk.</p><p>“Well, yeah, of course. Because you guys are, aren’t you?” Jack asks, that guileless smile that lights up his face makes Dean’s heart pulse with relief. Their kid already knows, in that way that kids figure things out on their own, not always getting the details right. The best part is that he’s okay with it.</p><p>“Not exactly,” Dean says, knowing he’s stalling, “But in some ways we are, sure.”</p><p>“Just not the kissing and sex part, yeah I know, I know. Cas told me you’re constipated about all that.”</p><p>Dean glares over at Cas who is attempting to look innocent and not like he’s about to laugh until he keels over.</p><p>“Constipated…Cas, exactly what in the fuck did you tell him?” Dean asks, keeping up the glare even though Cas is now laughing.</p><p>Cas sobers up when he sees the intensity of Dean’s glare. “The truth of course, that you and your brother, even though you are chosen by God to be soulmates have not let yourselves break the laws of human society. In a word—constipated.”</p><p>“Even though those laws are totally stupid, and don’t really apply in your case,” Jack adds with a one-sided grin.</p><p>“Oh really,” Dean asks, raising his eyebrows at that answer and that grin. “Do go on.”</p><p>“Yeah, if you love each other like you guys do, then what is the problem?” Jack asks.</p><p>“Indeed, I have always wondered this myself,” Cas says.</p><p>“Well, it would have been nice if you could have said something at some point over the last what—eleven years,” Dean says.</p><p>“I am quite certain that you would not have reacted well if I had brought the subject up at any point in the past. In fact I am very surprised that we are having this discussion at all,” Cas says, looking at Dean with an annoying level of sympathy.</p><p>“Me too,” Dean manages to say.</p><p>“I’m not, I’ve been wanting to talk about it for a while now. Ever since I came back,” Jack says.</p><p>Dean knows there’s been some changes in Jack after being dead and in the Empty for all that time, and they haven’t figured them all out quite yet. Subject for another day. The topic of him and Sam is a little more immediate, even though he’d rather not talk about it with anyone, except maybe Sam.</p><p>“Go talk to Sam about it then, I’m sure he’ll have lots to say,” Dean suggests.</p><p>Cas raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.</p><p>“Okay, I’ll go look for him,” Jack says and lopes off into the hall.</p><p>“That was about a million kinds of weird,” Dean says.</p><p>“Yes, it was indeed, but that is our Jack. Are you okay, Dean?” Cas asks.</p><p>“No, I’m not—long story, and I really don’t want to get into it right now,” Dean says, massaging the back of his neck and avoiding Cas’ eyes.</p><p>“Like I said, constipated,” Cas says, a hint of a laugh in his voice.</p><p>Dean scowls and chooses to ignore the poke. “Hey, can you tell me what this thing is, good or bad-wise? I found it in a hidey-hole when I was ripping out the old carpet.” Dean points at the gris gris bag sitting on the Impala’s hood.</p><p>Cas walks over and peers down at it, he puts a hand out towards it and the faint light that Dean has always called his scanner goes over the surface of the bag. Cas picks it up and holds it between his two hands and closes his eyes.</p><p>“This has a lot of power, it seems to be on the protective spectrum, but it is quite unusual,” Cas says, setting the bag back down on the car. He watches it settle down as soon as it’s back in contact with the car’s hood. “It seems to be tuned to protecting this car and only this car.”</p><p>“Protecting how exactly?” Dean asks. “Like keeping it safe?”</p><p>“No, not like a shield that repels harm, something more akin to protecting it from human tracking, or observation.”</p><p>“That explains a lot. Can you tell how old it is?” Dean asks.</p><p>“I cannot pinpoint it exactly, but I would say it is likely to be as old as your brother,” Cas says. “I would recommend leaving it in the car."</p><p>“Thanks, Cas.” Dean says.</p><p>“Speaking of your brother, are you and Sam okay?” Cas asks.</p><p>“Why, are you detecting a disturbance in the Force?” Dean jokes.</p><p>“Actually yes, there is a pall over this place, I’m sensing more sadness,” Cas says. “More than usual, I mean.”</p><p>“Well, there’s been a lot to be sad about lately,” Dean says.</p><p>“True, I am here if you need someone to talk to,” Cas offers.</p><p>“Yeah, I know, thanks. Hey, can you go check on Jack and Sam? I want to finish this up,” Dean says.</p><p>Cas nods and heads down the hall in the same direction Jack left. Dean leaves the bag where it is, Sam should see it before he buries it back in the trunk again. Dean cuts away the rest of the carpet and switches off the light, imagining his dad asking Missouri to make him something to keep his car un-trackable. Or maybe she’d put it in there without him even knowing about it, since he’d been so against anything magic. That’s a definite possibility.</p><p>Dean heads straight to the showers then, he feels grimy from working with the old carpet. He’s enjoying a long, hot, think-nothing, feel-nothing shower when he realizes he’s being watched. He rinses his face off and opens his eyes. Sam tracks the length of his body, lingering wherever he wants. Dean feels even warmer under his brother’s scrutiny. Dean shuts the water off, suddenly angry. They aren’t this, they can’t have this or do this, so what the hell does Sam think he’s doing?</p><p>He turns away from Sam and wraps a towel around his lower half.</p><p>“Sorry to interrupt,” Sam says, finally breaking the silence.</p><p>Dean doesn’t say anything, Sam had looked anything but sorry. He gets his shaving kit and starts shaving at the sink furthest from the door where Sam is still hovering.</p><p>“Can I talk to you for a second?” Sam asks, sounding hesitant and yes, sorry.</p><p>Dean looks at him in the mirror, sees his down-turned eyes and slumped shoulders. “Sure, just let me finish.” He concentrates on the last few strokes of the razor, knowing that Sam is tracking it with his eyes, which is making his hand almost shake. He’s not going to be able to ignore this stuff and just deal, this is going to be worse than he’d thought, both of them knowing and being stuck in never-ever land. He rinses off the razor and slaps on the after-shave he’s used for years, gasping at the shock of the alcohol and breathing in the scent that he still enjoys. He sees Sam’s nostrils flare, and then Sam is smiling, even with his eyes.</p><p>“What the heck are you smiling about?” Dean asks, packing up his shaving kit and setting it on the shelf.</p><p>“It’s…well it just hit me, I’ve been watching you shave almost my whole life. And you’ve always used that same aftershave, the smell of it is a constant I never noticed.”</p><p>“Go write it in your journal or something,” Dean grumps. “I’m gonna go get some clothes on, then we can talk.”</p><p>Sam follows him, even through his door that he nearly closes in Sam’s face. Sam sits down in the desk chair.</p><p>“I won’t look,” Sam says, blushing and turning away to give him privacy. It’s fucking ridiculous.</p><p>“Whatever, I don’t really care if you do,” Dean says.</p><p>“Yeah, you do though,” Sam says, staying turned away. Dean pulls his clothes on extra-slow just because Sam deserves it for being right. Dean hates being called out on stuff like this. He finishes and sits down on his bed facing the desk and Sam’s back.</p><p>“I’m all decent and covered-up now for your virgin eyes,” Dean says, watching as Sam picks the frame up and sets it under the desk lamp. His fingers linger over their younger faces.</p><p>*****<a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a></p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>*****</p><p>
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</p><p>Sam turns around, with one of Dean’s favorite smile/scowl bitch-faces.</p><p>“So I take it that Jack found you?” Dean asks, guessing that Jack raised some issues that Sam now needs to talk about…again.</p><p>“Yeah, he did, so did Cas,” Sam says.</p><p>“And?” Dean asks, making the c’mon tell me more hand circle.</p><p>Sam shrugs and grimaces. “You were right.”</p><p>“About what?” Dean asks.</p><p>“I didn’t need to leave it up to Jack, he was already on board with it. Cas had just talked him out of bringing it up with us last week.”</p><p>“How did that discussion go?” Dean asks, trying not to smile yet.</p><p>“It was awkward, well I was the only one who was weird about it, they were fine. They have the twenty-thousand foot view of things or whatever. Jack told me he could see it now, after he was brought back from the Empty,” Sam says.</p><p>“Could see what?” Dean asks, not really clear on what Sam is talking about.</p><p>“You know the whole thing about how angels can see our souls? Apparently our bond, the soulmate thing shows up too, and Jack can see us fighting against it, all the time. He told me he wondered how and why we were doing that, wasting all that energy when we could just be happy. Cas had tried to explain it to him,” Sam says.</p><p>“So I’m supposed to believe that just like that, after one conversation with Jack, you’re suddenly just okay with it?” Dean asks, refusing to even let himself start hoping.</p><p>“Dean, I said I was sorry last night, and I meant it. I shouldn’t have put you through that, but I had to be sure.”</p><p>“Sure of what? Because if you’re not sure of me, then I don’t think this can work,” Dean says.</p><p>“No, I’m sure of you, Dean. Sometimes you’re the only thing I know for sure. I wish I hadn’t put a stop to things last night. I’m sorry that I hurt you by doing that, I really am. I’ll make it up to you somehow, I promise. Just…would you just come with me, you really have to see this for yourself,” Sam says. He stands up from the desk, and holds out a hand towards Dean.</p><p>Dean looks at him, right in the eyes, to see if he’s joking, and decides to take a chance. His heart is finely minced hamburger at this point, what else can Sam do to him. He reaches out, Sam’s warm hand envelops his completely (when had it gotten so damn big?) and Sam pulls him up. Dean’s in his space, they’re almost hip to hip with their clasped hands between them. Sam walks them out the door and down the hall to the great room.</p><p>Jack and Cas are nowhere to be seen, but there’s a big canvas propped up on two of the library chairs. It’s covered in swirls of painted symbols, there seem to be two distinct things that are joined in an intricate, almost incomprehensibly complicated pattern.</p><p>“What is this?” Dean asks, amazed to notice that Sam is still holding his hand. How long has it been since he’s held anyone’s hand?</p><p>“Jack says it’s us,” Sam says. “As well as he could represent how he sees us and our bond with paint on canvas.”</p><p>Dean’s eyes trace the layers of paint, how they intertwine and make such a beautiful whole. Just seeing it makes his heart sing with joy and recognition, that’s absolutely them, that’s how it feels loving Sam and being loved by him. God he wishes he could just come out and say that, but Sam doesn’t..he doesn’t want that from him. “It’s pretty amazing, where is he? I didn’t even know Jack knew how to paint.”</p><p>“He’s gone, they’re both gone, for at least a week,” Sam says.</p><p>“Where’s the hunt this time?” Dean asks, not really caring too much, but suddenly caring quite a lot that they’re gone and he has his brother all to himself again.</p><p>“They didn’t have a hunt in mind, but I think they’re heading for one of the coasts,” Sam says.</p><p>“Huh, a vacation will be good for both of them. I wonder if they know how to swim?”</p><p>“They left us alone on purpose, Dean,” Sam says, turning towards Dean, still holding Dean’s hand he brings their entwined hands up to rest on Sam’s chest, right over his heart. “So we can work this out.”</p><p>“Work what out?” Dean asks, like the ass he knows he is, playing dumb for the last time before it all changes.</p><p>Sam pulls him up onto his toes and leans down to brush their lips together. Dean loses his balance and rests his body against Sam’s, pressing up into his lips, already desperate for more. For whatever his brother will give him, it’s embarrassing as hell, but he doesn’t care, not after this many years of denying it. Dean gets his other hand clasped around the back of Sam’s neck, steadying himself, pressing himself against Sam so he can feel Dean harden as their kiss deepens.</p><p>Gasping for breath, Sam pulls away, his face gives the truth to the lie.</p><p>Dean wants to scream, the goddamned hesitation in every line of his brother’s body is so obvious and heart-breaking—Sam doesn’t want this.</p><p>“You don’t really want this, do you? You don’t want me, why would you make me think you did?” Dean asks, his voice sounding as dead as he feels inside.</p><p>“I do, oh god I do want you, Dean, so much that it almost hurts, but…” Sam says, stopping himself from finishing the sentence.</p><p>Dean steps away, his hands and heart suddenly empty. He hadn’t thought Sam could do anything else to his heart at this point, but that ‘but’ might as well have been the final sword cutting it out of him. He’s about to turn away and run for it when his brother’s hesitant voice stops him.</p><p>“Let me try to explain, please, Dean. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s not you it’s me. It’s been a really long time since I’ve done anything sexual with anyone. And the last time, which wasn’t even real, and it wasn’t my choice, was when Lady Bevell…”</p><p>Dean can barely believe it, Sam’s hesitation is now adorably vulnerable instead of a cutting final thing. It’s precious and sad and of course he’d need to go slow. Dean is an idiot and an ass, but he already knew that. Dean gathers him up into his arms. “Sammy, it’s okay, we’ll go as slow as you need to. I’m kinda out of practice too.”</p><p>“You mean it?” Sam asks, broken and hesitant.</p><p>“Yes, I do, we have the whole rest of our lives to figure this out, right? There’s no rush or anything,” Dean says. “Come on, let me see them, please?” Dean strokes Sam’s cheeks where the dimples should be.</p><p>Sam smiles, slow and wide. “You really have a thing for my dimples, huh?”</p><p>“You have no idea,” Dean says, waggling his eyebrows.</p><p>Sam laughs and pulls Dean up off his feet, setting him down on the table next to Jack’s painting. He steps between Dean’s legs and leans down to kiss him, slow and thorough. Dean aches with Sam’s tenderness that has this force of strength barely contained behind it. All he wants to do is make Sam give it up, give it over to him, he needs him to get over that hesitation. “Sammy, c’mon don’t you hold back, I want it.”</p><p>Sam groans at Dean’s words and grips him so tightly Dean knows there will be bruises. The most welcome sort of bruises he can possibly imagine. He gasps with the feeling of Sam’s strength slowly unwinding. He leans back, going flat on the big table, pulling Sam down on top of him. Feeling the weight of him, the sheer strength that he’s using just holding himself back. “I mean it, Sammy, I want it all, I need it.”</p><p>Sam presses down briefly, then raises himself back up, his arms gone stiff and taut with the strain of holding himself up off of Dean.</p><p>“What do you want, Dean? Be specific.” Sam lowers himself down, slowly pressing most of his weight into Dean.</p><p>Dean gasps when he can feel Sam pulse and harden the more he grinds against him. “Just…fuck, anything…please,” Dean says, knowing that he’s pretty much begging, and not caring one fucking bit, which is the most wonderful, freeing thing in that moment.</p><p>Sam looks down at him, and Dean realizes that Sam is unlike any other lover he’s ever had, because he’s actually being seen. He feels warm from his head down to his toes and he doesn’t care how corny it sounds, he feels filled up just by the loving way Sam is looking at him.</p><p>“I love you so much, Dean. Do you have any idea?” Sam says, slow and careful, his words matching what his eyes are communicating.</p><p>“Yes, I do, it’s the same for me,” Dean answers, his hands cupping Sam’s face, willing himself to say the words—the actual goddamned words. Sam needs to hear them, and Dean knows he needs to say them—out loud and here and now. “Love you so much, Sammy, always have.”</p><p>“Always, yeah always, Dean,” Sam says, gasping out his name as they grind together.</p><p>Sam’s hips have started a rhythm, almost a dance, pressing in close and hard, a dirty grind in a slow circle, and it’s driving Dean wild for more, for anything. They move into a space where they’re more in sync than usual, each anticipating the other’s moves before he makes them. Pitch, catch, thrust, retreat, on and on in a sea of movement and desire that’s powerful and he never wants it to stop. And then it changes, goes up to another level where Dean could swear he can feel his own desires being anticipated, and fulfilled in unexpected ways by of all people, Sam. How is his brother this good at this? Is it just them? Is it as good for Sam as it is for him?</p><p>“Yeah, it is, Dean, ’s fucking perfect,” Sam says in a beautiful slur that lights Dean up on the inside, he’s done that, he’s made Sam lose it so much that he’s swearing and slurring his words in that husky, fucked-out voice. Sam’s hand grazes against him where he’s hard and wanting, and just that extra pressure is enough to send Dean spiraling off into the bliss he never thought he’d get to experience with Sam.</p><p>Dean recovers enough to wrap his arms around Sam, pulling him down so he can get his teeth into the softness of Sam’s neck. “Want to feel you come on me, Sammy,” Dean growls, letting go of the skin he’s made his mark on. He pulls his shirts up, exposing his bare stomach, his sweatpants very low on his hips, he can feel the wetness spreading from where he’d let loose.</p><p>Sam groans at his words and increases the speed of his thrusts, the friction is perfect and divine even though Dean’s sensitive after coming so hard. He grips the swell of his brother’s ass and pulls him in even harder, and Sam loses it then, the tip of his cock presses into Dean’s belly and he can feel the come pulsing out all over his skin, hot and sticky. His stomach flips over deep inside with the feeling of it, of Sam pressing it into him, with his fingers, drawing designs and symbols that’ll mark him forever.</p><p>“See, just like riding a bicycle, right?” Dean says, pulling Sam into a long slow kiss that makes his toes curl up in his slippers.</p><p>“Oh it was a hell of a lot better than that,” Sam says, smiling down at him, wide and sated.</p><p>Dean reaches up and holds his brother’s face in his hands, his thumbs fitting into Sam’s dimples, he just looks his fill as his brother looks back. This is what Jack’s painting meant. “That painting, it’s how I see us, and now it’s somehow even more.”</p><p>“More what?” Sam asks, a quizzical pul to his eyebrows.</p><p>“More <em>us</em>, because we’re not fighting against this anymore,” Dean says.</p><p>“It’s all different now, it’s all colored differently, and the shapes, look,” Sam says, eyes searching Jack’s painting.</p><p>“It’s like a fucking mood ring or something,” Dean says.</p><p>“We’re hanging this up over our bed,” Sam says. “It’s us, it’s always been us.”</p><p>“<em>Our</em> bed?”</p><p>Sam presses himself up off of Dean’s body. He starts to stand up, like he’s going to walk away. “Sorry, just assumed.”</p><p>“Hey…hold up, Sammy. I’m just surprised, it’s gonna take me a while to get used to this.”</p><p>“Get used to what?”</p><p>“Getting every damn thing I ever wanted,” Dean admits.</p><p>Sam smiles at him and holds out a hand to help Dean up. “Yeah you better, and we’re keeping that silver picture frame too.”</p><p>“Whatever you want, Sammy,” Dean says.</p><p>“Careful what you’re offering there, Dean,” Sam says, picking up Jack’s painting.</p><p>“I live a life of danger, bring it on,” Dean says, laughing as they walk towards his room together.</p><p>Dean takes down some of the weapons over his bed to make room for the painting. Sam gets it centered and hung. “It’s okay if we use your bed, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s always been too big for just me,” Dean says.</p><p>“It’s a lot cushier than mine,” Sam says.</p><p>“It’ll remember you too,” Dean says.</p><p>“I only care about you remembering me,” Sam says.</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about that,” Dean says. “You’re the only one that’s ever been worth remembering.”</p><p>Sam’s arms tighten around him, almost making it hard to draw a breath.</p><p>“Dean, I’m really glad you found that camera.”</p><p>“Me too, Sammy, me too,” Dean says. He flicks off the bedside light and snuggles down next to his brother, his partner, his everything. How’s he ever going to let himself sleep now that he has this?</p><p>“Sleep, I’ll still be here in the morning, I promise,” Sam mumbles, sounding at least halfway to sleep himself.</p><p>
  <em>The End</em>
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